IIn 2002, a group of five Italians made local news: they would be the first company in the country to develop a game for Nintendo’s popular portable computer, the Game Boy Advance. The cadre put together a few hundred euros and some computers to prepare the project. They had no experience making games. They didn’t even have a programmer. All they had was a love of video games, a shared hatred of working for bosses, and endless optimism.
The group worked away for the next two years. Late nights were common and the team barely took time off. It was a grueling time, but they were determined to create an ambitious game with complex features. His name was Kien. If you haven’t heard of it, that’s because it never came out—until now. The action platformer only saw the light of day this year, by which time most of the original team had long since moved on. Of the group of five, only one member remained: game designer Fabio Belsanti, who never lost faith in the project.
Kien currently holds the record for the most delayed video game in history – 22 years eclipsing the 15-year journey of the infamous Duke Nukem Forever, a shooter that was delayed so long it became a meme. After all that time, people can now buy Kien on a Game Boy Advance cartridge.
The game starts by asking the player to choose between his two protagonists – a warrior and a priestess. A warrior can kill his enemies with a sword, and there are quite a few of them. I died repeatedly in that first level. There are many skulls in armor and they come to life after a short while. You can’t let your guard down in Kien, which may be why Belsanti likens it to the early Dark Souls. It’s reminiscent of that one weird game you chanced upon as a kid, maybe because the artwork looked awesome, or maybe it was the only thing left on the shelves of your local movie store.
Of course, a multi-decade release schedule was never the plan. The game was completed years ago and several publishers have shown interest in it. After picking one up, the wind turned for Belsanti after Kien’s publisher of choice did some market analysis that determined his game was too risky to support. At the time, each Game Boy cartridge cost $15 to produce.
“The amount of capital required just to print the initial copies was daunting, especially as the chances of commercial success were low based on industry trends at the time,” Belsanti told the Guardian.
But despite this setback, Belsanti clung to hope. He attended university in Tuscany, where he spent a year delving into the archives of unpublished books from the 15th century. These were thrilling tales of a mercenary band in the early Italian Renaissance that included knights, soldiers, and squires—but due to their age, these stories have essentially been lost to time. Kien is inspired by these stories, the unusual graphic style of early Japanese games, and action games such as Turrican. Despite his age, Belsanti considers Kien a pioneer of his kind, similar to games like Dark Souls. The non-linear fantasy game is unforgiving, but players are rewarded with a gripping tale of a lost civilization.
As Kien languished in development limbo, AgeOfGames, the company Belsanti founded, had to find a way to survive. “The capitalist system is a merciless meat grinder,” he says, “to which I have adapted out of necessity, but I do not like it. The company found a niche in educational games. One of their biggest successes to date has been ScacciaRischi, a platform game developed for Italy’s INAIL, a non-profit group dedicated to helping people prevent injuries and illnesses at work. It was played by tens of thousands of students and covered topics such as the Covid-19 pandemic.
AgeOfGames could continue down this path forever, but a shift in the gaming industry has suddenly made Kien a possibility again. Over the past five years, the boom in the retro gaming scene has revived interest in aging hardware and rare games that can fetch thousands on the resale market. Not only did the cost of producing GBA cartridges drop, but companies grew to meet this demand.
“I believe we’re at a similar stage to. [the revival of] vinyl or cassettes for music,” Belsanti muses, “a return to earlier, more primitive forms of the medium fueled by the nostalgia of the generations who lived through those times and the curiosity of those who came after such technology.”
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Kien’s new publisher Incube8 specializes in producing games for classic consoles – and supports Kien. The game is now sold in an eye-catching translucent gray cartridge. The game also comes with a multi-page manual, a package that has practically disappeared from modern games.
“On a romantic level, the idea of releasing a game on the original console is just magical,” says Belsanti. “Seeing Kien come to life on the platform he was designed for is a dream come true.”
AgeOfGames is already working on a spiritual successor. As he did more than 20 years ago, Belsanti hopes the public will see the value in a game like Kien, even if it doesn’t have advanced graphics or fancy bells and whistles.
“The power of the video game experience can, not always, but in some cases, be much more intense and powerful in old video games made with limited graphical and technical resources,” says Belsanti. “I’ll never forget the emotions I felt looking at the cover of my Philips Videopac or Spectrum ZX or Commodore 64 video games that had nothing to do with the pixels that appeared on the screen. My imagination created a bridge between artwork and pixels, filling every limit and deficiency with fantastic stories.”